Abstract:
Decision making and problem solving are especially important skills for business and life. As an innovation leading corporate, Sony has gradually lost their superiority in innovation and core competences under more and more intensive competition environment.This report is made to investigate Sony current procedure on its solving problems and making decision, analyze approaches and tools used by Sony, and identify best solutions and opportunity of improvement by review the impact of success.As part of my research study, the key areas of a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) - analysis has been performed for Sony’s chosen model (Plan–Do–Check–Act Cycle- PDCA Cycle), analyze andreview the findings of PDCA Cycle is adapted by Sony. A comparative analysis has then been made in order todistinguish differences and similarities between the PDCA Cycle; Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) model and 8D models. The report is also support me to suggest my recommendation model (8D model) by findings and comparative results.Finally, I will introduce a strategy that to ensure my recommendation model can be acted and implemented against Sony’s problems in future
Machine summary:
This report is made to investigate Sony current procedure on its solving problems and making decision, analyze approaches and tools used by Sony, and identify best solutions and opportunity of improvement by review the impact of success.
Sony establishes and maps problem solving to its decision making process as following, see table 1.
Table 1: Problem solving process in Sony Step Problem Solving Stage Decision Making 1 Identify the problem 1 Frame the decision 2 Explore alternatives 2 Innovate to address needs and identify alternatives 3 Select an alternative 3 Decide and commit to act 4 Implement the solution 4 Manage consequences 5 Evaluate the situaton 4 & 1 Manage consequences & Frame the related decision Source (http://www.
The PDCA cycle will support Sony to answer three questions in problem-solving and decision-making process (table 2).
Basically the same methodology also as PDCA or DMAIC but put more emphasis on the data collect and analysis, but again an iterative cycle to continually improve the problem solving process.
PDCA Cycle and DMAIC are all simple process but powerful models to drive continuous improvement in a business environment and a must for business solving problems.
Problem solving and decision making are not easy for most organization, but there are many theories, approaches, models, technologies and tools to support this process to implement as result in better more effective solutions.